The game gamblers bet $49m on

Date: February 09 2013

Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker

ASIAN gamblers bet almost $50 million on an A-League match between Melbourne Victory and Adelaide in December, a former FIFA executive has revealed.

Amid the fallout from the Australian Crime Commission's explosive report on drugs and organised crime in elite sport, Fairfax Media has been told by FIFA's former head of security, Chris Eaton, that a Hong Kong bookmaker took bets worth $49 million on the December 7 2012 game in Adelaide.

Mr Eaton said this was $7 million more than placed with the same bookie on that weekend's famed Manchester derby in the English Premier League. It is believed the bets were laid with the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

There is no suggestion that the Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United contest, which Adelaide won 4-2, or any other A-League game has been corrupted.

A Football Federation Australia spokesman on Thursday said: "As far as we are aware, and we have been in touch with VicPol, there is no A-League match under investigation."

Mr Eaton, who last year became the director of integrity for the International Centre for Sports Security, said the big money for the A-League game highlighted how Asia's betting market is increasingly turning to Australian soccer. Because it is in a favourable time zone, it enables punters to bet just before and during a match.

“It certainly highlights the vulnerability of Australian sport in Asia,” he said.

In other developments:

■Australia's anti-doping agency is examining intelligence that players from up to five NRL clubs may have taken banned or highly questionable supplements.

■AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said on Friday that specific allegations had been made by the crime commission against at least one AFL club.

■It emerged that the sports scientist at the centre of the Essendon drugs scandal, Stephen Dank, is part of a performance enhancing drug distribution network that has links to Sydney bikies, rugby league clubs and an escort agency.

■Australian bookmakers suspended betting on the opening match of the AFL season between Adelaide and Essendon, to be played in Adelaide on March 22.

■Fremantle chief Steve Rosich defended the AFL club's reputation as a "clean team", saying the Dockers would only ever inject natural substances such as vitamins.

■Cricket Australia said it would consider prohibiting the airing of betting promotions during television coverage of matches.

■And Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she found it "sickening" that Australian sporting prowess might have been fuelled by performance enhancing drugs.

It is believed Essendon, Geelong and the Gold Coast are the AFL clubs being investigated by the crime commission.

The five NRL clubs under scrutiny have been named in intelligence gathered by anti-doping agency ASADA.

It is understood it raises suspicions about whether the supplement regimes used by individual players or advisers linked to small groups of players may be in breach of anti-doping rules.

Fairfax Media is not naming the five clubs believed to have been referred to ASADA.

But in a separate development this week, auditors from Deloitte, working for the Australian Rugby League Commission's in-house investigation, visited the headquarters of the Manly Sea Eagles and Cronulla Sharks to seize supplement registers ahead of the release of the crime commission's report. The auditors also visited Penrith and Newcastle this week.

Asked to comment, NRL media and communications director John Brady said: ''Due to legislative restrictions placed on the NRL we are not in a position to divulge any content from any briefing we received from the ACC.''

Stephen Dank has previously worked with Manly, Cronulla and to a lesser extent, Penrith. He was also deeply involved with Essendon Football Club's training program last year.

Mr Dank is under investigation over allegations he may have exposed Essendon players to banned peptides while he worked at the club last year.

He has strongly rejected allegations his work at Essendon and NRL clubs involved banned substances.

Mr Demetriou said he could not provide details about the allegations against at least one AFL club without breaching a confidentiality agreement he and other administrators had signed ahead of a briefing on the commission's investigation.

''We have been given broad information that would lead us to believe that we have to work with ASADA to investigate some of these broad informations that we have received,'' he said.